The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of apparatus for infeeding essentially flat products, especially printed products, arriving in an imbricated product stream, to a transport device.
Generally speaking, the apparatus of the present invention is of the type wherein the transport device contains, viewed in the direction of conveying, tandemly arranged gripper elements for seizing the infed products. A conveyor element is provided which is equipped with a number of equidistantly spaced entrainment members which engage at the trailing edges of the products. These entrainment members are revolvingly driven at a greater velocity in relation to the infeed velocity of the imbricated product stream.
With an infeed apparatus of this type, as the same is disclosed for instance in German Patent Publication No. 2,822,060 and the aforementioned cognate commonly assigned, U.S. Pat. No. 4,201,286, to which reference may be readily had, there is infed to each gripper of the transport device one printed product. This means that the conveying velocity of the transport device must correspond to the conveying velocity of the infeed apparatus, which, in turn, must be accommodated to the infeed velocity of the imbricated product stream. Now if the imbricated product stream is delivered at a greater velocity or speed, for instance by a rotary printing press, then the correspondingly high travel velocity of the transport device, among other things, produces increased wear of the latter.